In the race to the bottom, there is no SCAM (supplements, complementary and alternative medicine) further from reality than homeopathy. Not only are the underlying Laws goofy after minimal reflection, homeopathy is simply water. Or a drop of water placed on a sugar pill. I do not see the point in using phrases like ‘highly unlikely’ and ‘highly improbable’ to describe homeopathy any more than I would to describe the tooth fairy. Homeopathy is flat out unhinged.
Given its total separation from reality, I have long wondered why practicing homeopathy is not considered a delusional disorder. Per the DSM V delusional disorder is
characterized by persistent delusions—strong beliefs in things that are not based in reality…
These delusions, which are fixed false beliefs, stand out because they persist despite clear evidence to the contrary. Unlike other psychotic disorders, individuals with Delusional Disorder do not typically exhibit other prominent psychotic symptoms, such as disorganized thinking, hallucinations, or severely impaired functioning. …
Grandiose: Belief in having exceptional abilities, wealth, or fame…
People with Delusional Disorder often function relatively well in daily life outside of their delusional beliefs.
If the foo shits, although I expect someone will set me straight in the comments as to why this is not the case. As long as it is not a homeopath.
It raises the question if the answer to combating SCAMs would lie in treating the practitioners with
Antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants and mood-stabilising medications are frequently used to treat this mental illness and there is growing interest in psychological therapies such as psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a means of treatment.
Probably not.
Despite the above, homeopathy continues to be inflicted on patients by homeopaths and naturopaths in lieu of useful therapy. Much to my ongoing wonder, research on the fiction continues with around 200 papers indexed on the PubMeds in the last year. Like my recent journey down the rat hole that is chiropractic, let’s see what those delusional homeopaths have been up to in the last year or so. Of course I am not going to discuss all 200 plus papers, just those of interest to me. You know, the crazy stuff.
And right of the chute, first reference, first paragraph, is gibberish in Homeopathy at a Turning Point
In the Hippocratic conception, medicine is a synthesis of technique, philosophy and humanism, but in essence it is nothing more than the expression of the living being to counter predestination. Its foundation is the dose–response relationship that a living organism expresses when perturbed by an external agent. In practice, however, this interpretation is defined by the knowledge, thought, economic means, politics and religious sentiment of the community to which the organism belongs.
The author is out of Italy and perhaps this is the best translation ChatGPT could do, although the paper does not get much more coherent. For example, what to make of
These findings lead me to define a homeopathic remedy as a “clathrate of clathrates of gas molecules”, present as nanobubbles.
I guess Otis Eugene “Gene” Ray was reincarnated as a homeopath. Anyway, if you read through the paper, the author bemoans the decline of homeopathy despite the fact he considers that the foundations of homeopathy to have a well-defined coherent scientific basis and
In summary, homeopathy is at a turning point, having failed to communicate a message that justifies its existence.
Good luck with that.
Not everyone agrees that homeopathy is a “clathrate of clathrates of gas molecules”, present as nanobubbles and there have been numerous attempts to justify the delusion by a variety of mechanisms by which water could have a therapeutic effect. Some are summarized in Mapping the Theories and Models on the Mode of Action of Homeopathy: A Scoping Review and found 72 theoretical approaches to justify homeopathy but reduced them to 14 largely nonoverlapping frameworks. Those frameworks are water structures, general physics, nanostructures, mathematical models, chemistry, quantum physics, biochemistry, weak quantum theory, hormesis, quantum analogie, biophotons, complex systems, electrodynamics, and humanities.
A tale told by a homeopath, all sound and fury signifying nothing.
But I wondered, what do biophotons have to do with homeopathy? My first hit:
The author develops the idea of exogenous homeopathy through biophotonic resonance. He describes a synthesis of cutting-edge ideas, including healing as a holographic process, that uses biological lasers powered by the piezo electric effect in liquid crystals. Such a system is so exquisitely sensitive, it can respond to the subtle effects of archetypal symbols, prayer /intention, homeopathy, sounds, odors, colors etc. The author explores the holographic universe, energy micro-traps, the light matrix and more, with plentiful photographic illustrations.
What the? I really should not have bothered. So much word salad jargon.
But the effects of homeopathy were not due to placebo:
Also of note is that the placebo argument, despite being often used to criticize homeopathy, did not appear in our findings as a well-articulated theory.
Not a well-articulated theory? Reading the paper, it seems the researchers quoted in the review neither understood nor applied the placebo as an explanation. They apparently ignored placebo effects. Explains a lot, really.
The authors focused on the two more delusional aspects of homeopathy, as if delusions can be ranked, the potentiation procedure and the principle of similars.
The most controversial topic in homeopathy is the use of often highly diluted potentized (serially diluted and shaken or “succussed”) preparations, especially when the degree of dilution exceeds the inverse of Avogadro’s number. However, at the very core of homeopathy is the Principle of Similars, which is used to determine the remedy to be applied for a specific patient. This principle states that a homeopathic remedy is to be chosen based on the best possible match of a given patient’s symptoms with those induced in healthy volunteers by a particular homeopathic preparation (similia similibus curentur, also referred to as the Principle of Similars, “let like be cured by like”).
Not addressed is the fact that homeopathy is just water and does nothing.
Nanoparticles are popular as an explanation, and I use the word explanation, like Humpty, to mean nanoparticles explain nothing. But they try, oh do they try:
Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, zeta potential, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy are techniques that have been employed to date to explore HMs for NPs.
I thought the zeta potential was a teleportation ray developed on the planet Rann to send Adam Strange to earth. My bad. It is a real phenomenon misused by homeopaths and others to the point it could be teleportation device.
When you read these ‘explanatory’ papers, they are usually a combination of gibberish and misunderstanding of the real underlying science. Are they willfully misrepresenting the science or are they not smart enought to understant it? Not that the two are mutually exclusive.
But, no surprise, these nanoparticle studies are questionable.
Though a few studies were of good methodological quality, many presented poor design in the form of lack of control groups, deployment of a single microscopic technique alone for characterization, and sometimes insufficient limit of detection of the instruments involved.
But I would not expect the delusional to do quality studies, which would counter their delusion.
Well, no. And it should read can homeopathy cure any disease, but it is an interesting paper on who believes in homeopathy, and they found 4 subgroups, What was not surprising was
The subgroups that supported or were open toward the standalone use of homeopathy in serious conditions perceived science to be the most limited, corrupt, onerous, and heretical. They also cared the least about scientific evidence regarding homeopathy and indicated to believe in its effectiveness even if it is not yet scientifically proven.
The unanswered question is why and what to do about it. Probably nothing. I suspect it is the human condition for some.
Why does homeopathy fail to show efficacy in clinical trials? Not because homeopathy doesn’t work, but that
In homeopathy, however, where treatment is individualised, past and present context-sensitive, and closely related to the therapeutic encounter, RCTs cannot readily capture the core principles of practice.
or so says in Improving the Relevance of Research in Homeopathy. It suggests other, less rigorous, more pragmatic, evaluations of the delusion, since
While it’s important for us to understand how homeopathy works, it’s equally important to demonstrate that homeopathy does work
Homeopathy is the Invisible Boy from Mystery Men, who has
the power of invisibility, but it only works as long as no one (including himself) is looking at him.
Homeopathy only works as long as no one (including the practitioner), is carefully looking at it.
When I think of antidotes, I think of a chemical that reverses a poison or overdose. Homeopaths use the term differently, as reviewed in Antidotes in Homeopathy: Classical Doctrine, Clinical Relevance and Scientific Re-interpretation. In homeopathy it is used as an excuse for failure. Besides the fact they are only giving useless water. Hahneman, the first to pull homeopathy out of his, er I mean, thin air, and used antidotes an excuse when
remedies fail to act as expect or appear to be interrupted by external or internal factors…it is a dynamic disturbance of the organism’s global response to stimulation.
Nope. You didn’t give the incorrect remedy, it was the antidote that caused the failure. Must be nice to have a ready made excuse for failure.
How then do you know that the homeopathic remedy is the cause of the patient’s improvement. They use the Modified Naranjo Criteria for Homeopathy
which, as you can see, is useless for determining if the response is due to placebo, regression to the mean or the delusional water. Which is why the Modified Naranjo Criteria for Homeopathy is widely used. It appears made to prove causality, which is what a homeopath would want. It is for good reason they avoid more rigorous criteria, like Bradford Hills. Plausibility and coherence would sink that ship immediately. Homeopaths want their tools at least 12C, where not even a molecule of rigor remains.
Because if you have a rigorous study, like Homeopathy for Chronic Non-specific Low Back Pain: Randomised, Double-Blind, Crossover, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial Investigating the Efficacy of rigorhe Biotherapic Lumbar Vertebra (BIOVERT Trial), you find
No specific effect of the Lumbar Vertebra LM2 biotherapic was demonstrated. Improvements are likely due to non-specific effects such as the therapeutic environment, patient expectations and placebo response.
Although I could not find what the standardized homeopathic biotherapic (Lumbar Vertebra, LM2 potency) was. I was curious what was used applying the so-called Law of Similars. How does one use, say, chopping wood (gives me low back pain) as a homeopathic remedy. Not out of the question for a delusion that can prescribe moonlight. And homeopaths want to be taken seriously.
Sometimes you come across a sentence that sums it up. In Prognostic Factor Research: The Core of Homeopathy’s Scientific Identity they discussed the results of 161 cases of COVID treated with homeopathy and noted
In scientific terms, this research was far from perfect and proved nothing…
Sums up the whole homeopathic research field.
I do not think homeopaths are intentionally funny, but you have to wonder with articles like
Following a thorough case evaluation, the patient was prescribed Ruta graveolens 200CH, followed by Thuja occidentalis 200CH. The anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, and anti-cancer properties of both these medicines have been thoroughly demonstrated via many scientific experiments.
One in vitro paper each, both evaluating actual chemicals, would be two, so technically many. And where is the like cures like in the treatment? Also, I find
Ruta is also one of our best remedies for prolapsus of the rectum.
Normal people get prolapse if they take Ruta? Such flexibility in treatments.
We believe the positive effect is due to their alkaloids, but we have not questioned how they maintain their qualities at such high dilutions.
Of course they didn’t as at 200C
At the declared homeopathic dose of 200C, the total mass of pills that would have to be consumed to encounter a single molecule of the original substance would be billions of times greater than the mass of the Earth.
Why challenge your delusions with a bit of chemistry?
From a SBM perspective, the vaunted individual individualized treatment, often found in studies of what are usually self-limited diseases, makes purported causality of homeopathy even more problematic. If each patient gets a different treatment, from a reality-based perspective, you can make no conclusions. From a delusional perspective, it is the strength of homeopathy. Same issue with acupuncture, btw. It renders interpretation of studies like A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Homeopathy in Acute Viral Tonsillitis in Children and Effectiveness of Homoeopathic (sic)Treatments for Sleep Disorders in Children and Adolescents A Systematic Review According to the Principles of Evidence-Based Medicine even more problematic than the fact they are giving water to treat disease. And there are many other studies with a similar design.
Some papers seem to be written to scare those attached to reality:
Integrating Traditional Medicine with Conventional Therapies to Combat Tuberculosis: A Comprehensive Review. Yeah. Let’s treat TB with homeopathy. That’s gonna work.
and
Exploring Holistic Healing of Cancer: German New Medicine (GNM) and Homeopathic Treatment Beyond Traditional Therapies And let’s treat cancer with homeopathy, since cancer is due to emotional trauma and amenable to homeopathic treatment. OH GOD, OH MAN, OH GOD, OH MAN.
And that’s what I could suffer through, er, I mean, found for homeopathy in 2025.
Oh, and here is a fun fact. Before he pulled homeopathy out of his backside, Hahnaman thought many diseases were due to coffee. And he was not a fan of chocolate.
He even goes as far as to say (in his essay of 1803) that children and babies accumulate the ill-effects of coffee from their parents and from being in the same rooms as coffee drinkers. Being convinced in his mind of the certainty of the theory apparently impelled him to then find ‘evidence’ for it, no matter how ridiculous.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.